Light In The Dark
by ardavenport
Summary: Luke looks inward and out to the Force before his own Jedi Trials to face his father.


**Light in the Dark**

by ardavenport

Luke climbed down into the darkness, away from the fire lit gatherings of the Ewoks above, among the high tree branches. A few furry sentries noticed him, jabbing their spears in his direction, but apparently news of their acceptance into the tribe had spread. None of them really challenged him.

He let go of his thoughts of Leia, the others and the mission as he descended lower and lower into the near complete darkness of the forest floor. But he could see some stars through the branches of the tall trees and a few fragmentary glimpses of the Empire's new iDeath Star/i in the sky above. Luke began walking.

The forest moon of Endor was alive with creatures in the night. But compared to the teeming swamps of Dagobah, it was only sparsely populated. There was nothing dangerous nearby. The breeze was cool and crisp and scented with green, growing life that cleansed the air of the debris of living. On Dagobah, every living creature, from microbes to swamp beasts, loaded the oppressive, still air with their own aroma. The air of Endor was as sparse as Tatooine's desert winds in comparison.

He could not precisely 'see' in the dark with the Force, but in his mind he had an image of where the path was. His hand would come up automatically or his body turn to the side without his prior thought to avoid or deflect branches and rocks or ruts in the trail. Compared to the humid, starless nights of Dagobah with its snakes and hanging vines, puddles and slippery mud holes, Endor was an easy stroll. And he had only to glance above at Endor's ominous artificial satellite to focus on his goal.

'Strong in the Living Force, you are,' Yoda had told him. Luke did not really know what that meant, and Yoda's explanation had been only to ask him more questions. Luke grudgingly accepted that whatever it meant, he would have to discover it on his own. Now he wondered if it was moments like these, when he walked forward, when the action itself was as much a part of himself as it was what he was doing. Action and being had become the same thing.

'Vader. You must confront Vader,' was the last test that he needed to pass to be a Jedi. Or he would be nothing at all. Leia had begged him to run away, but that simply could not happen. He kept walking with no plan, no mission, no goal.

He would confront Vader.

Vader would confront him.

iYes/i, he realized. This would be just as much a trial for his father as it was for him.

He continued on. His muffled boot steps, the snap of a twig and rustle of leaves blended into the nighttime mutterings of the great forest around him. He could feel this moment through the living things all around him. And after that would be the next moment. After that would be Vader.

Luke knew this with a calm certainty that this was his way forward, not in time or place, but through the Force itself. But all he knew was that this meeting would be different, not like his passionate and thoughtless plunge toward Bespin to 'rescue' his friends from Darth Vader. In the end, he had only delayed their escape by needing to be rescued himself. Luke still cringed to think about it.

Thump!

His shoulder collided with a low branch across the path.

'Let it go, let it go,' Luke told himself. It happened. It was done. That action had been a part of him as well, at the time.

Luke continued on through the forest toward the shield generator that protected the new iDeath Star/i. He could see the reflected lights from it through the trees. There would be patrols, life sign sensors, seeker droids. But he was still too far away to be distinguished from a large night animal.

He stopped and backed away from the trail. Reaching his hand out, he felt the trunk of a tree. Following the curve of it, he next found an enormous log on the ground with his foot. Turning, he sat down on it; his fingers felt the mossy surface of the log and then the solid tree next to him. Wider than the breadth of his arms, it completely blocked his view of the glow of the shield generator among the trees. He might as well have been the only person on the whole planet. But he wasn't. His father was near, above in orbit.

Through an opening in the branches, Luke could see the sun-illuminated super-structure of the new iDeath Star/i hanging above, an unfinished machine-globe.

The black image, the breath sounds, the low ominous voice of his father came to him too easily when he looked at the Emperor's new iDeath Star/i. Vader was there now. Luke knew. He knew it from the sense of his father that came to him outside of his own memory from his misbegotten confrontation with Vader on Bespin. Long hours of training and meditation on Dabogah had taught Luke the difference between the subtle flows of the Force and his own imaginings.

Sitting straight up, his hands resting on his knees, Luke closed his eyes. The sounds and smells in the darkness around him receded. His sense of the Force increased. Vader was there above him. Vader was thinking of him.

Darth Vader knew he was there.

A swirl of a black cape in a dark room stopped before Vader's Sith Master. Of course, Vader told the Emperor of Luke's presence, but of Palpatine's response, Luke could not tell through the Force. While Vader was a real presence, Palpatine was shadowy and distant, an ambience of evil only.

As a member of the Imperial Senate, Leia had met Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader, more than once. She had told him about them, but those descriptions were no help to him now. And even in the midst of a brutal interrogation from Vader when he had captured her on the first iDeath Star/i Vader had never suspected Leia's identity, his own daughter. She had not even realized it herself until that night, when Luke told her.

The black images of Vader and Emperor shifted in Luke's mind to Leia. In pain. Crying out.

But. . . . not Leia.

Luke felt his own heartbeat increasing, but he kept his thoughts still and separate from the images he saw through the Force. A white room and babies crying.

/Obi-Wan. . . ./ she called out to the person holding her children.

/There's good in him. I know. I know there's still. . . ./ Her life slipped away, battered and crushed by the darkness of the Sith.

Luke's eyes snapped open. He was in the forest again amidst the natural night and darkness. His heart beat loudly in his chest.

'I never knew my mother,' he had told Leia. He still did not. He never would. But this was the first time he had ever seen her through the Force.

'Things you will see, through the Force, people. . . . ' Yoda had taught him. Leia had seen her mother, retained feelings of her, without ever knowing they came through the Force.

Luke had known it instantly, Leia's connection to him, the moment Obi-Wan had told him that he had a sister who had been concealed from the Emperor. Events suddenly added up into certainty. Yoda telling him of another Skywalker with his dying breath. Bail Organa sending Leia to retrieve Obi-Wan Kenobi from Tatooine. Discovering, soon after the Alliance evacuated Yavin, that they were both adopted and both their mother's name was Padme. In a galaxy of so many thousands of worlds, that could only have been a coincidence at the time. But that little fact always intruded on him whenever he was close to Leia.

Luke had been raised by his aunt and uncle, who had met his parents once. Of course, Owen and Beru had left out the part about his father, Anakin Skywalker, being a Jedi. Given the events that led the Empire to the farm and ended their lives, Luke could well understand why they had hidden that knowledge, just as Yoda had concealed his own father's part in the destruction of the Jedi. And once Luke had found out the dark truth of his father, he had sought out his mother.

'There's good in him.'

Those whispered words clung to him along with the image of his mother's face, desperate to make Obi-Wan understand.

Luke looked back up at the iDeath Star/i in the sky and closed his eyes.

'Anakin,' he thought.

It fit.

Underneath the black armor and the weight of evil was Anakin Skywalker, the Jedi. Luke could see it, like the light hidden among towering black shapes. He had already challenged Darth Vader and accepted that Vader was his father. But Vader wasn't. Anakin was his father, and that was who he needed to confront.

Luke sat silently in the glow of that moment.

'There's good in him,' his mother's voice whispered again in his mind, over the memory of mechanically enhanced breathing and black armor and helmet.

A machine sound interrupted his revelation. An Imperial patrol crashed through the foliage. The lights the troopers carried were not near, so Luke rose and silently went toward them.

He had to get right in the stormtrooper's path for them to realize he was there. They raised their blasters, but Luke kept his hands up and visible. The white armored clones surrounded him, checked him for weapons, took his lightsaber.

"I'm a rebel. I'm alone. Lord Vader will want to see me," he told the clone commander. After a moment's confused pause the trooper repeated his suggestions to his comrades who accepted what they were told. They put binders on his wrists and marched him down the path, toward the building under the shield generator. One of the troopers commed a commanding officer. The news of his capture would filter upward to higher commanders until it reached Vader himself.

And then Luke knew that Anakin would come.

**-- END **

(this story first posted on tf.n: 2-Jun-2007)

**Disclaimer:** All characters and situations belong to George and Lucasfilm; I'm just playing in their sandbox.


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